Spent 3 hours tracking down a parasitic drain on a 2018 Ford Escape yesterday

Turned out to be a faulty BCM that was staying awake after the car was locked. Had to pull the fuse for the interior lighting module to finally get the amperage to drop below 50 milliamps. Has anyone else run into these newer modules causing intermittent drain issues?

3 comments

3 Comments

margareto261mo ago

Man, that brings back memories... my buddy had a '17 Escape last year and we spent three weekends pulling our hair out over the same thing. @wendy131, you're spot on about Ford's gremlins - his BCM was keeping the backup camera module alive even with the key in his pocket. We finally figured it out when we noticed the rearview mirror light was staying on just barely enough to dimly see it in the dark. Ended up having to do a full module reset by disconnecting the battery and touching the cables together... old school trick, but it worked long enough for him to trade it in.

danielnelson1mo ago

Oh man, don't get me started. Had a '19 Escape last year with the exact same headache, BCM stayed alive just to run the dome lights at 0.1 volts or something weird like that.

wendy1311mo ago

Used to think it was just bad battery drain stories until this happened to me. Now I'm convinced Ford has some real gremlins in that body control module.